Thursday, April 9, 2009

The ancillary revenue drama continues with another bit of travel news out of the U.K.'s Luton Airport, which is set to introduce a passenger drop-off fee.

Drivers who decide they don't want to pay the fee would have to park in the boondocks [an Americanism that means a parking lot in the stratosphere] when depositing travelers at Luton.

The airport already charges fees for luggage carts, clear plastic bags to get liquids through security and fast-lane security access.

But, now easyJet and at least one other airline have seen enough of these ancillary-service fees -- at least when it is an airport that's collecting the revenue.

"Whatever next?" e-tid.com quotes easyJet spokesman Andrew McConnell as saying. "We have seen charges for fast track security and plastic bags. Now they want £1 for dropping somebody off at the airport.

"This new scheme is a recipe for traffic chaos, which will see people stopping on double yellow lines or parking in the bus lane. Passengers already pay to use the airport facilities as part of their air fare."

One might ask the airlines, too, what's next? Many airlines believe it's OK for them to charge a bevy of fees for heretofore free services, but now they are balking when an airport gets in on the action.

To use another American idiom: It seems to me "like the pot calling the kettle black."

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I've followed online travel, its twists, turns and detours, since the beginning (not Adam and Eve, but Rich and Terry), and will follow the aforesaid in this blog. I'm North America editor of Tnooz and I write USA Today's Digital Traveler column. Things not in my resume: I visited Orbitz headquarters pre-launch in 2000 and, left unattended, eavesdropped and examined the whiteboards to learn partnership details; Travelocity's ex-CEO Michelle Peluso credits me with her success (Wharton notwithstanding) after I wrote a sentence (with accompanying photo) mentioning that some of her Site59 women wore fishnet stockings and then airline execs kept the phone lines busy; I once drove to tiny Sherman, Conn., to see where PhoCusWright lives; and I was a nachtportier in a West Berlin hotel in the days (Btw) when a nasty wall split the city. Fyi, the previous stuff wasn't necessarily in chronological order.

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